Web font services join fray as .webfont format gains support

At least two other services will join TypeKit in attempting to provide @font- …

Improvements to CSS3, in particular a revival of the @font-face directive for linking to server-based fonts, promise to allow designers to deliver richer and more nuanced typography on the Web. And while Firefox and Safari (via WebKit) are leading the way by supporting standard TrueType and OpenType font files, posting commercial fonts on a publicly available Web server violates the licensing agreements from most type foundries. So, at least three services are close to launching, giving Web designers and developers access to licensed typefaces that will work with @font-face. And even while several foundries are looking to license their fonts for these services, several prominent foundries have expressed support for the .webfont format that is being proposed to the W3C.

Why bother?

What's with all the hubbub about Web fonts anyway? Microsoft licensed a number of fonts years ago, which became the de facto "Web fonts," and the Web has survived just fine with those 10 choices. And let's be honest, something like 98.7 percent (an unscientific estimate) of text on the Web is set in just one of four typefaces: Times, Arial, Verdana, and Georgia.

"The answer is contained in two words," designer Richard Rutter told Ars. "Design and accessibility."

While the commonly used typefaces are well designed, especially for display on most current low-resolution monitors, they don't offer the same wealth of character and differentiation available to print designers. Differentiation is especially important to corporations, for example, which often use custom designed or modified typefaces for corporate identity purposes. "At its simplest, access to a wider range fonts is about making websites look more individual," explained Rutter. "At a more esoteric level it's about choosing faces whose individual spirit and character is in keeping with the text."

Beyond such aesthetic considerations, however, are some practical concerns, especially for accessibility. While designers have developed workarounds that involve converting some or all text into graphics or Flash, such solutions are a compromise. Using real text means less data to download to display a page—not incredibly important if you have high-speed broadband at home, but it's still a concern for the burgeoning mobile Web. Real text also has the benefit of being resizable, translatable, indexable, can be read out loud using a screen reader, and can even be displayed with an alternative font if necessary. And non-Latin-based languages aren't well-served from the common Web fonts—having downloadable fonts "will be a boon" to those publishing in languages like Greek, Thai, or Chinese, said Rutter.

Today: TypeKit, Fontdeck, and Typotheque's web font service

So having fonts that can be downloaded and used by the browser has some important advantages, and there is already some technical support via the @font-face directive. But how can type foundries be coaxed into licensing their typefaces for use online, where rampant font piracy would be a mere click away? That's where services like TypeKit and Fontdeck come in. These services host licensed typefaces, and provide designers with custom CSS or JavaScript code that will work with a variety of browsers. And while TypeKit and Fontdeck are working with several foundries to hopefully serve as one-stop shops, independent foundry Typotheque has even built its own comparable service.

"[Our service] works with raw TTF fonts, but hides the URL where they are hosted, so they can't be copied," Typotheque's Peter Bilak told Ars. "Our system will take a copy of our retail font, will reduce the character set and remove all the font tables that browsers can't read, and provide the user with just a piece of code to embed on their site. The file size is then reduced to about 10 to 20 percent of the original size."

This is a preview of TypeKit's editor UI, which allows a Web designer to configure a subset of characters to use, weights and styles, and what CSS classes to associate with a font.

Both TypeKit and Fontdeck work in similar ways to Typotheque's own solution, even if they differ in technical details. The services license the fonts on a per-domain basis, so other websites can't simply copy source code and gain free access to fonts they haven't paid for. They allow custom subsetting of the font files, which can reduce the amount of font data that needs downloaded. Fontdeck, being developed by Rutter's Clearleft design firm, can serve different font formats depending on the browser—Internet Explorer supports @font-face, but only with Microsoft's custom EOT format. And the services have different ways of providing fallbacks if the browser doesn't support @font-face—TypeKit will even serve sIFR or Cuf�n if @font-face isn't supported.

There are criticisms of such systems, however. One is that the systems are run by third parties and must be relied upon for uptime. Another is that the pricing can cause issues—while not all details of pricing have been finalized, proposed subscription models and bandwidth usage fees can make costs harder to anticipate. And some people argue that these systems don't prevent font piracy—the main concern of font designers and distributors—it merely makes using type more difficult.

But, Rutter told Ars, folks rely on third-party services all the time—think Google Maps or Amazon S3—so designers and developers shouldn't be concerned about reliability. "Reliability is possible, and any failure of a font service is nowhere near as critical as failure of these other services—we just get a fallback to the current situation of viewing text with installed fonts," he said.

Pricing will vary among the services, no doubt, but having multiple services competing against each other should ideally result in pricing that the market is willing to bear. And as far as font piracy is concerned, foundries aren't interested in DRM, they just want to keep downloading fonts from being trivially easy. "Our intent is only to discourage casual misuse and to make it clear that taking fonts from Typekit is an explicit and intentional act," explained TypeKit's Jeffery Veen on the company's blog.

Tomorrow: a Web font format of our very own

So, while Web font services have some downsides, they work now (Typotheque gave us a sneak peek at its service) and should be publicly available soon. But there are proposals for a Web-specific font format, one of which may gain traction within the next few years. Microsoft recently submitted its proprietary EOT to the W3C a a proposed standard, but was roundly rejected. The awkwardly-named "EOT Lite" was proposed as a compromise, since it would be compatible with IE. However, as Richard Fink of Readable Web explained, EOT Lite as proposed is little more than a TTF file with a tweaked header and a different file name extension. And The Font Bureau's David Berlow has suggested adding a table of permissions to the standard OpenType format, which browsers could check to see if the font is licensed for use with a particular website. The makers of Firefox and Opera have stated in no uncertain terms that they will not implement license enforcement into their respective browsers, though, which could lead to inconsistent handling of licensed fonts.

The proposal that seems to be getting the most attention from foundries and the W3C is the .webfont format proposed by typographers Tal Leming and Erik van Blokland. The .webfont format is a zip-compressed bundle comprised of two files: info.xml, which contains metadata in XML format, and fontdata, which is the actual font data in whatever standard format is available—currently it's OpenType, but it could be anything. While the format doesn't offer the same level of obfuscation as services like TypeKit, the metadata is designed to carry licensing info along with the font, as well as a field that lists the URLs that a particular copy is licensed for. Such fonts would have at least a 40 percent file size savings thanks to the zip compression, but conversion tools from font vendors should allow for character set subsetting, which would afford even more file size reduction.

The list of foundries that have pledged support for the format includes House Industries, FontShop, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, and more—even Typotheque is behind the proposal. "It is not an ideal proposal, but a compromise," Bilak said, "though it still manages to address the concerns of many type foundries. In a way, for us it doesn't really matter, because we design and sell fonts rather than the technology behind it."

And it appears that browser vendors are willing to get on board with the format, especially if the W3C adopts the proposal as a standard. However, even if consensus could be reached on .webfont (or any other proposal), the specification would have to be hammered out in a working group in the W3C and finalized before browser vendors will support it. ".webfont is a solution for the future, say in two to four years," Bilak said. Others have speculated that the process may take five years or more.

As it stands, though, designers will have @font-face, combined with either freely-licensed "open" typefaces or licensed fonts available through services like TypeKit, to bring us a richer, more nuanced, yet still accessible online experience. Like all emerging standards, it will take some time for richer typography to spread into mainstream use. But we think when the results of these tools start appearing online, the change will be a welcome one.

Originally posted by kindakrazy:Remember, fonts are 'special', and need special DRM just for them, as they are extra special IP. Way more special IP than those stupid images, text or anything else on web sites.

Right. So how many fonts have you made from scratch again?

This is no different than Getty Images charging licensing fees for using their professionally-taken photographs on commercial sites. Makes perfect sense to me.

Originally posted by kindakrazy:Remember, fonts are 'special', and need special DRM just for them, as they are extra special IP. Way more special IP than those stupid images, text or anything else on web sites.

Right. So how many fonts have you made from scratch again?

This is no different than Getty Images charging licensing fees for using their professionally-taken photographs on commercial sites. Makes perfect sense to me.

DRM != licensing fees. The font foundries all seem to be under the shared delusion that the only way anybody will license their fonts is if they are encumbered with a layer of DRM that's enforced by browsers. People license photographs without browsers having to implement DRM for them.

Particularly with open-source browsers, any drm implementation will merely be a small speedbump for anybody who doesn't want to license it, but will add meaningful costs to those that do want to license it.

DRM != licensing fees. The font foundries all seem to be under the shared delusion that the only way anybody will license their fonts is if they are encumbered with a layer of DRM that's enforced by browsers. People license photographs without browsers having to implement DRM for them.

Particularly with open-source browsers, any drm implementation will merely be a small speedbump for anybody who doesn't want to license it, but will add meaningful costs to those that do want to license it.

Pretty much this. Why are you willing to line up and go for DRM in a font license, but probably not okay with it in music/movies/etc.?

If it's shown on the user's screen, it's on the user's computer, so it can be copied. Doesn't matter if it's music, text, images or, as in this article, fonts. Any valid business model must take this into account.

Everytime something new comes on the Web, people will try to invent some copy protection for it (remember when people tried to copy-protect their html designs and CSS files?) but after a while technology moves on. Those who are willing to pay for individuality, will keep buying fonts, i.e. design houses and corporations. Everyone else will keep on using any font they got from anywhere, as always.

Originally posted by kindakrazy:Remember, fonts are 'special', and need special DRM just for them, as they are extra special IP. Way more special IP than those stupid images, text or anything else on web sites.

Right. So how many fonts have you made from scratch again?

This is no different than Getty Images charging licensing fees for using their professionally-taken photographs on commercial sites. Makes perfect sense to me.

DRM != licensing fees. The font foundries all seem to be under the shared delusion that the only way anybody will license their fonts is if they are encumbered with a layer of DRM that's enforced by browsers. People license photographs without browsers having to implement DRM for them.

Particularly with open-source browsers, any drm implementation will merely be a small speedbump for anybody who doesn't want to license it, but will add meaningful costs to those that do want to license it.

++ on the DRM bit. The position of the font foundries is also slightly misrepresented here - originally, they wanted something more draconian, but now they've negotiated themselves down to anything that is not .ttf or .otf directly on the webserver.

.webfont is a security blanket for foundries. Right now, what you need to do to copy a downloadable font and use it as you like is:

1) Read the source of the page you're viewing2) Find the URL of the font file - possibly in a linked CSS file, but somehow linked from the main page3) Download the font file4) Install it onto your system

.webfont adds the following step

3a) Unzip the .webfont file to get at the .ttf or .otf inside.

Yeah, that will stop many font pirates. We're delaying @font-face adoption by years for THAT?

Alternatively, you can use open source fonts such as those available here.

iwod : uh, what ?Do you really need and extended set wherever you go, especially since you're not going to write in cyrillic, arab, greak, japanese, chinese or whatever, but just in the small subset of the english language (or any western language for that matter, most of them only add little diacritics). No, you don't. Then an extended set is way below 1mo and cover nearly all your need. Or maybe you need all then weight in every aspect of the font ? Dubious. Then you can trim whatever you don't want.

Darkowl : Well... I don't know you, but I haven't got a line slower than 4mbps for the last 5 year. And that's way out of a major city. Now I have a 100mbps line, and even if most adsl top at 12000, it seem fast enough to download sometimes a font. That you can (and will) be cached. Will be faster than downloading each time a fancy swf, or a picture for each headline.

DRM : doing a font is hard. Yes. Still, every font can be found on dark corner of the net, DRM will not stop anyone on getting them. Like music...

Originally posted by brownd4:I think you can embed fonts in Silverlight executables where the user can't download it to their computer. No need for server-side DRM crap.

Embedding fonts in anything that is non-text is exactly what font-face is trying to avoid.

Maybe I don't understand enough about the whole way fonts are downloaded, but if a browser grabs some or all of a particular typeface for a web page it doesn't actually save it to your fonts folder so how is it supposed to be stolen? From the cache which could be encrypted? If no-one can get to the full font-file then your typeface is safe, right?

if a browser grabs some or all of a particular typeface for a web page it doesn't actually save it to your fonts folder so how is it supposed to be stolen? From the cache which could be encrypted? If no-one can get to the full font-file then your typeface is safe, right?

If the data traverses a network, it can be recovered. It might be encrypted, but then the browser would have to implement the decryption keys, which would either be on disk or in memory, and thus snaggable. While your average user really won't care about how they get the font, anyone with an interest and a bit of a clue can probably get it with a bit of work. The whole 'custom JS + only works for a domain' sounds a lot like encryption and referrer checking. The former can be sniffed/cracked, and the latter can be spoofed.

The foundries would probably love a micro-payment per page rendered; how they'd actually measure that is another issue (given the grief you get with click-counting on ads/page views on ads), and billing accurately is yet another issue.

It's great that designers want more flexibility but adding padlocks to the web is a flying leap backwards. Instead, Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera should build upon Microsoft's original 'web fonts' kit by licensing new fonts directly from font creators. Pay some guy $x,000 for the 'web edition' and everyone is free to use that font on their site.

Yeah, just another stupid option to toggle off whenever I setup firefox or whatever browser. It's just yet another excuse to waste power and bandwidth. For example, what happens when the font server doesn't respond right away, so the browser draws the page, then the font server responds? Will the browser then waste even more power redrawing the page so some corporate shrill can brainwash you into buying their ever shittier products? Seriously, to hell with that.

I have a hard time caring. There's plenty of very nice-looking web sites as is... and there's plenty of god-awful sites that definitely SHOULD focus on many things before fonts... and probably WILL focus on them.

So it will distract web designers, make pages heavier/slower... Change that. I DO care. I'm against.

I'm fine with this whole scheme - as long as my favorite browser has an option to disable @font-face.

Edit: I was just going to say that, but thought of some other points:

1. All the fancy fonts are replaced by plain-old regular ones if you look at local copy of a page, or look at it with a different browser, unless it makes a new network connection? No thanks.

2. New binaries = new security hazards for Windows users.

3. By limiting what fonts are installed on the PC, you can allow sites to specify fonts, yet still prevent horrors like Comic Sans. If you turn on the @font-face option (or use a browser that doesn't allow turning it off - gaaaaaaa!) you lose control over what fonts you will see.

Thus, back to my original comment, I'll turn it off.

For those exulting about how much nicer pages could look with thoughtful design and expertly chosen fonts, what do you think the proportion will be of pages like that to pages that are esthetic disasters? I predict about 1:1000 or worse.

The thing to watch here is the per use or rent-based licensing. Currently, you buy a font and you use it as you see fit. What many of these sites are pushing for( and the foundries are certainly behind it ), is perpetual licensing payment. It's no different than all the other media and software payment models the creators of such dream about. Pretty sweet deal for something that has a one-time cost to create and then can be endlessly duplicated for $0.00, but charged for in perpetuity. I create once, you pay me over and over.

I bet everyone wishes they could get paid forever for last Tuesday's widget.

All i can say is that there are already a crap-load of websites i never visit at home with my wonderful dial-up service and that ANYTHING which slows down access to web sites will put them on the "don't bother visiting" list.

Is there a table somewhere that lists side-by-side suitable Mac and Linux alternative fonts to use for Windows fonts, and vice versa? Including the Vista/Office2007/Windows 7/Snow Leopard fonts, with fallback font alternatives when they're not available?

Then I would say, let the operating systems or web browsers license and include a wider selection of fonts.

Then if I wanted to use, e.g., Mac Optima, in CSS, I could also specify a Windows and Linux similar font alternative easily without having to do masses of personal research, and know it would roughly look the same.

I'll just re-iterate this again, as the point seems to have flown by some of the commenters: None of these type services use, or act as, DRM. Foundries are well aware that DRM pretty much doesn't work; they are well aware that even with the obfuscation that these services provide that it's still possible to steal fonts; they are well aware that Firefox and Opera will not enforce licensing.

The idea is to make stealing the fonts a) not as trivial as clicking, and b) so that those who do it do so knowing it is wrong. EOT is essentially dead. Berlow's permissions table is an interesting idea, and works with standard OT fonts, but the second biggest browser is just plain not gonna support it. .webfont is designed to include relevant licensing information in the file, and yes, you could unzip it, extract the fontdata and pour it into a OTF file. That still means you'd have to take active steps to do so, and should you ever end up in court over it, it would be easy to prove willful infringement.

Yes, if data is on a network, or in digital format, it can easily be stolen. That doesn't mean it's ethical (or even legal) to do so. Typographers work hard and I believe they deserve to be paid for their work.

As a web designer and site owner, I don't want to rely on font service providers. I don't like the 3rd party server reliance, paying fees or requiring visitors to have Flash and/or JavaScript installed, working, current and/or enabled.

As a web developer, I don't need to rely on font service providers, because there already exists an easy, cross-browser method of embedding fonts using CSS3's @font-face selector. It's easy, it's valid, follows web standards, there's no 3rd-party server reliance, it's free and doesn't depend on either JavaScript or Flash.

No disrespect to foundries and or font services that create or offer professional, high-quality fonts. They should be able to charge what they can for their work and services. However, there are already free fonts, some of high-quality and many of acceptable quality. I'll be using those for the majority of my projects. ;-)